by V. L. Locey
“Those kids were so messed up,” I sadly murmured. “He’s made the right up here. Let’s go on ahead so he doesn’t get suspicious.”
Okay.
“I have to wonder if talking to yourself is why cops always travel in pairs?”
They travel in pairs for security, which, you know, you may want to consider here, butthead.
“Pfft.” I kept going straight after Freddy Ford turned off onto what was more or less a cow path along the edge of a cornfield. I kept going for about five hundred or so feet, easing the Tesla along, the road nothing more than a miserable washboard. I stopped, turned off the lights, and cut the engine.
I slung the seatbelt over my shoulder and exited the car. Damn, it was dark down here in the hollow. Did the moon ever shine down here?
What the hell are you doing, Kye? You don’t have a weapon or a working cell phone. Get back in the car.
I held up a beefy fist. “This is my weapon. It served me well in the NHL for twenty years.”
Only morons bring a fist to a gunfight.
“Shut up, brain.”
I jogged around the Tesla then proceeded to pick my way along the edge of the field, the light wind making the stalks brush and rustle together. I slid into the corn, cutting across the field, saving time and using the tall green plants for cover. I parted two stalks heavy with cow corn to peer out into the night.
“Found you,” I whispered then nodded at the doublewide sitting beside a small barn. The lights were on inside. The truck was parked by a small barn. I would just sneak down, peer into the barn, and see what I could see. If there were deer body parts, I’d hustle ass back to my car, drive like Satan was after me, and find a fucking hot spot so I could make an anonymous call to a local wildlife officer to clue him into this situation. I blew out a breath to steady my nerves and off I crept, keeping as low to the ground as I could. The porch light was on, but the barn was dark. I made a slow circle of the barn, rising up on my toes to try to see inside as I kept my ears locked on the double wide. The windows were open and the sound of a comedy of some sort on the TV rolled out into the muggy night. The moon finally managed to toss a beam through the thick canopy of trees overhead.
The glass was dirty and covered with fly shit, but the inside looked like a fucking butcher shop. There were tables covered with sheets of bloody plastic. There were four racks on the nearest table, all still covered with velvet.
“Shit,” I gasped and dropped back down to a crouch. Sneaking as well as a big d-man can sneak, I rushed back to the cornfield, got lost, had a small panic attack when I recalled that damn Stephen King movie about kids with murdering devices and a hatred of anyone over twenty-one in cornfields, then finally burst out of the stalks a hundred or so feet from my car panting like an overworked plow horse.
I snuck out of the hollow, creeping along until I hit the main road, then I gave her some gas. As I drove, I kept checking my bars. When I climbed the hill by the old post office, also long out of business, the phone lit up with incoming messages. I hit the brakes, pulled into the post office, and dialed Davy. Then, I recalled it was supposed to be anonymous, so I pulled up my shirt and held it over the bottom of the phone to mask my voice.
“Hello,” Davy said.
“Hello,” I replied lowering my voice. “I’d like to make an anonymous tip about possible poaching activity down in Hooper Hollow. I saw a man in a similar make and model truck like the one the game commission officers lost a few weeks ago. He was loading a cooler into the back of his pickup, and it was smeared with blood. I followed him back to the Markson property then did a quick recon of the barn where the truck was parked. Inside I saw signs of butchering and several fresh deer racks, still in velvet.”
“Kye, what the fuck are you doing sneaking around private property in the dead of night? That’s a good way to get shot!”
“Kye? On no, I’m not Kye. I’m just an anonymous caller with a tip.”
“Kye, your name came up on the caller ID,” he snapped. “Also, only someone close to me would know about that truck getting the slip on us.”
“Oh.” I let my shirt fall back down over my belly. “Well, I think I found your man or one of them.”
He said a few filthy words about my lack of sense then told me to go home. I drove back to the hollow, parked down by the cornfield, and waited. When midnight rolled around, I was sound asleep. A crow cawing right beside me startled me awake. I got out of the car, stretched, moaned, and plodded through the cornfield with the sky just purpling up. By the time all the legal ducks were in a row it was morning, and the sun was just peeking over the horizon. I spied Davy and Officer Old Guy aka Officer Martin Douglas at his side along with a pair of Maine state troopers riding shotgun since the game officers were spread thin. Got to love budget cuts.
I sat down in the last row of corn and got to enjoy seeing good old Kyle Markson, in his ratty boxers, answering the hammering on his rusty screen door. The stupid putz took one look at the game officers on his front porch and the two state police officers backing them up and made an ill-advised move. He took off.
Where the moron thought he would go I didn’t know, but he bolted right into the arms of a Maine state police officer and was summarily and swiftly captured and cuffed. Davy and Martin did a fast check of the house, carting out bags of deer meat that weren’t frozen solid yet as evidence. Then they hit the barn. I was still chilling up by the cornfield, which was as close as the man down there would let me be. Kyle Markson’s wife/girlfriend, Patty, was now making the morning more entertaining. She came staggering out, half-dressed, shouting at the game wardens as they lugged totes and coolers filled with venison and what appeared to be fish out of the barn. Once she was subdued, I opted to go wait in the car then follow the parade out of here.
I dozed off for an hour or so then was awakened when someone rapped on the window. I smiled lazily at Davy and pressed the button to lower the window.
“I thought I told you to go home,” he said in lieu of hello.
“Bad signal. I thought you said hang around the Markson place until law enforcement arrives.”
“You’re an asshole and a terrible liar.” I shrugged and winked. He sort of smiled down at me, just a little. “We’re doing a sweep of the area to see if we can find any carcasses that may have been dumped. If you want to go home and get some sleep, go. You did good. This is really going to help us with this case.”
“Hell no,” I said as I wiped at the sleepy dirt in the corners of my eyes. “I want to help. I’ll search with you.”
He studied me for a minute. “Okay then, stick close to us and do not touch anything.”
“Can I touch you?” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, too early and not enough sleep for flirting. Let’s go.”
By lunchtime, we’d searched around five acres of woodlands and found the remains of over twenty deer, two from last night. The dicks didn’t even cut off all the useable meat from the deer, mostly bucks, that they poached. Many were missing their heads.
“Why do people do this?” I asked Martin and Davy as we stood by the mound of illegally shot deer.
“Some do it just for the rush of doing something illegal. Why do rich people shoplift?” Martin asked, swatting at one of a million flies clouding the sky. “Some, like this shit bird, are after bucks in velvet. They take the antlers and sell them to the Asian market where they’re ground up into pecker pills.”
“Aphrodisiacs are the cause of all this damn waste?” I asked, holding my T-shirt over my nose and mouth. Both the game officers nodded. “Fucking hell, maybe people should buy Viagra.”
“Well, not the cause, but it’s one reason.” Davy sighed. His face smeared with dirt and sweat. “Lack of respect for the game laws and the animals we’re trying to protect for future generations is a large problem. This,” he waved a hand at the horrific mound ten feet from us, “is a small part of a larger issue with people who feel entitled to take what they want and the consequences be damned.�
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I shook my head, slapped at a fly on my arm, and spent the rest of the day with a dark cloud of melancholy over my head. Yes, I had helped catch one poacher. But there were more in this gang that were cruising the swamp. Probably asshole Kyle was already being released on bail or whatever legal fuckery would get him back home before nightfall.
“Want to come to my place and hang out?” I asked, not really expecting Davy to agree. With an internal hoot of glee, I went home to check on Dunny while Davy put in a few more hours of work. When he showed up at my patio door, he looked like walking death. “Go shower. I washed some of the clothes you’ve left lying around. We can kick back and unwind.”
Davy and I just chilled after long, hot showers and frozen TV dinners. We sat on my tiny back porch, watched the sunset, talked about the day and a new goose coop, and then went to bed, too exhausted to even give each other a lusty kiss goodnight. A small peck was all we could manage before it was lights out.
We slept until late afternoon. Both of us were stiff and sore, shuffling around like octogenarians as we whipped up eggs and toast for dinner.
“Remember when we’d stay up all night making sweet love in that old tent of Dunny’s?” I asked while we were eating out on the patio, or veranda as Davy jokingly called it.
“Seventeen is a long way from nearly forty. We used to sleep on the ground too, nothing but a sleeping bag between us and the ground. Try that now.”
He looked really nice today, softened from his long night, tired yes, but not as stiff.
“My sacroiliac would seize up.” He chuckled into his cup of coffee. “This is nice. You and me sitting here just being. I like this a lot.”
“Yeah, it is nice.”
After our dinner was done we ambled over to check on Sampson and her little ones. Davy’s parents came out to lend a hand. As soon as I stepped over the three-foot-high fencing, I got the hiss and neck shake.
“Easy now, mama goose, we just need to see what’s going on under you.” I glanced back at Davy standing beside his mom and dad. “Get in here! You’re the danged game warden. I’m just a dopey hockey player.”
Mrs. A muttered something in Spanish that made her husband and son snigger. Davy stepped over the chicken wire. Sampson was not happy. Her hissing was steady, and she was now opening up those big wings of hers. A charge and a wing crack were imminent.
“You grab the goose,” Davy began. I gaped. “You grab the goose, get her around the middle and pin her wings down. While you hold her, I can count the goslings and remove any unhatched eggs, so she’ll lead them to the pond when we free her. We have to make sure the little ones are eating the starter food we’re putting down for them. Okay?”
“Why do I have to hold the goose. Don’t you pinch my ass, you sassy wench!” I danced out of bill reach.
“Do you know how to check to see if an egg is infertile?”
“No.”
“Well then grab the goose.” He was smug. Handsome as hell but smug.
Throwing back my shoulders, I waded into the rhododendron and threw down with a goose. The goose lost but only just. Once I had her in my arms, her wings tucked close to her body, I had time to look down at Davy kneeling beside the nest counting fluffy yellow goslings. There were six. He checked the other eggs, holding them over a small flashlight he’d brought.
“These are duds,” he stated, taking all the unhatched eggs from the nest. “Once the eggs are gone that broody mindset should ease, and she’ll take them to the pond.”
“Can we—ouch! That was my ass you just pinched!” I yelled at Sampson, who hissed back.
Mrs. Aguirre laughed so long and so hard I was concerned she might pass out on the dud eggs. Mr. A handed Davy an empty bucket and he gently placed the bad eggs into it and quickly made his retreat. The goslings were freaking adorable, peeping for Mom, so I placed her beside the nest then ran. Hoping to look cool I leaped over the fence but the tie of my sneaker snagged on one of the posts holding the chicken wire up, and I fell flat on my face. This time Mrs. Aguirre really did fall to her ass in mirth. I picked grass out of my teeth, spit out an ant, and rolled over. Davy pointed at my chin as he laughed madly.
“Grass stains…on your chin,” he gasped, bent over at the waist, eyes watering with merriment.
“Great, thanks.” I scrubbed at my whiskery chin, pushed to my feet, and gave the howling threesome a sour look. “Okay, you can stop now.”
They did—eventually. Mrs. A went inside to blow her nose and returned with a cookie tin that she passed to me.
“That show was too funny not to be rewarded,” she said then began giggling. I cracked the lid, and my eyes flared. She smiled, just a wee bit. “You must share them with David.”
“I plan to share everything I am or will be with Davy,” I whispered beside her ear then gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Her eyes rounded, but she didn’t say anything snide. I knew I would win her over. I was just that damn cute. Also, I loved her son deeply. She had to see that.
With a tin of her pastissets in hand and firm gosling count, I went home alone. Sure, I wanted Davy to come up with me, but he had a night out planned with his parents. I didn’t want to push so I waved as I walked, carting the cookies up to Dunny’s where we put a real hurting on them as we talked goose coop. Tomorrow I would head to town for screws and such, then I’d have to call over to the lumber yard in the next county and have a delivery made. No way could I carry lumber in the Tesla.
“Any news on the Morton place?” I asked, dunking my cookie into my glass of milk.
“Not a peep. Funny how them folks just up and left. I still say they were up to illegal things. I seen them out there at night.” Dunny shoved another cookie into his face, his chin and lips covered with powdered sugar.
“There’s no law against being outside in your own yard at night. Maybe they were catching fireflies,” I offered, deciding on if I had room for one more cookie. I did.
“Maybe they were setting up a radio tower to alert the commies about what we brave Americans are doing over here,” he replied, tapping the wing of his drone that still wouldn’t fly but would he let me tinker with it or read the instructions? Hell no. Rockheaded coot. “That’s why I bought this. To fly recon missions over the Morton house.”
I opted not to mention the potato bug plan he’d spouted not all that long ago.
“If you don’t mind me pointing out a few flaws on your theory?”
He waved me off. “Ah, don’t be sitting there talking shit. I know commies when I see them.”
“Okay, sure, the Morton’s were communists who were working on a radio tower to relay top secret information to Mother Russia. What were they reporting, do we know? How many cows there are in this county, or if Mayor Ralph really did drive past Patty Mason’s cherry tree and stop to pick all the cherries, thereby leaving Patty fruitless so his wife would win the pie competition at the fair this year?”
“Go pound sand.”
“Also, Morton isn’t a Russian sounding name.”
“They were undercover. Jesus and Mary, you did take too many hits to your head.”
“Ah, yes, of course. So where is the radio tower?” I stood, walked to the screen door, opened it, and stuck my head out into the muggy night. “I can’t see it! Oh my God, the Russians have perfected a cloaking device. I bet they’re in league with the Klingons!”
“You always were a smart ass. Got that from your mother’s side must be.”
“Yeah, right.” I snorted, stepped back inside, and cleaned up our cookie and milk mess. Dunny went right up to bed, riding up the stairs in his chair as I stood at the bottom to watch in case he had trouble getting out of it. He didn’t.
“Go on home now. I want to go get the lumber with you so make sure you’re here at six so we can get an early start,” he shouted down at me.
“Dun, they don’t open until nine.”
“So? I don’t want to be late.” With that he shuffled off, cane in hand, and closed his
bedroom door.
“You don’t want a bath?”
“No, I’ll get one in the morning. Better be here at five!” he yelled through his door.
Right. Five in the morning to wash his ass was not happening. That was just too early to be soaping up old man balls.
Chapter Nine
Contrary to Dunny’s wishes, we did not leave before sunrise. My showing up at 7:30 was a burr under his saddle, I could tell. Tough. His shower time was short, and he managed to get in and out by himself without issue. He also dressed himself in shorts, a cotton short-sleeve striped shirt, and his sneakers. I had to tie the laces but overall a success. For a man of his age, he was doing great. We’d had a string of good days, aside from small memory things, so life was looking good for Dunny.
“Can we stop at the Morrow farm after the lumber mill? I want some duck eggs.”
We were sailing along a windy dirt road heading to Chicory Flats. “Are you sure domestic ducks are still laying? It’s August.”
“Not a clue. If they ain’t Mert Morrow has them leggerns that lay big white eggs. I don’t want brown eggs. Just white.”
“Brown eggs taste just like the white ones, Dun,” I pointed out as we cruised into Chicory Flats proper, a small town with a grocery store, a funeral parlor, a drug store, two bars, and a lumber yard. Oh, and a small farm supply/auto parts store. Bustling in comparison to Spruce Lake. Urban even. A pick-up with two teenagers holding Holstein calves in the back rolled past. Okay, so not urban but bigger than my dinky hometown.
